analysis The latest version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system will begin rolling out from Wednesday (July 29). And remarkably, Windows 10 will be offered as a free upgrade to those users who already have Windows 7 and 8.1 installed.

That the upgrade is free is an interesting move and comes off the back of much criticism over Windows 8. Interestingly, the software giant has also skipped over any planned version 9 of Windows. So what does this mean for Microsoft and the 1.5 billion people it says use Windows every day? Can the company restore some of the consumer and user confidence it has lost in recent years?

Under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft is transforming itself into a “productivity and platforms company”. This is a bold re-invention of the company as it seeks to secure its future in a market moving steadily towards cloud-based services and mobile devices powered by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Nadella sees it as necessity to broaden the company’s scope of operations beyond its current family of products and conventional modes of delivery. The market does not leave him with much choice if the company is to stay in the game, if not be a leader.

After Windows 10 it’s just Windows
For decades, the latest release of Windows has been a major event in itself. But that is set to end.

Windows 10 will be the last numbered version of the operating system. After Windows 10, it will simply be known as Windows. And you will get your updates incrementally from from the cloud via a subscription service.

In what it is calling a “platform convergence strategy”, Microsoft is creating a unified operating environment for phones, tablets, ultrabooks, laptops, desktop computers and Xboxes. All will be integrated by Windows 10, and increasingly so with the later Windows. The platform convergence strategy allows the creation of universal applications that can run on any platform with Windows 10.

Surprisingly, applications that have been developed to run on Android and iOS devices will also be able to run on Windows 10, albeit once they have been converted to make them compatible. Still, this will open up a vast number of potential applications to run across Windows platforms.

Focus on gaming
Microsoft’s acquisition last year of the hit game Minecraft for US$2.5 billion is a measure of how seriously Nadella and his strategists take mobile gaming.

Minecraft is a hugely popular open world game that gives players the freedom to create create and manipulate an on-line world made of Lego-like blocks. The move will establish Microsoft in the booming world of mobile games as well as further popularising the Xbox gaming console.

But the question on many people’s minds is whether the personal computer itself is dead, and along with it Microsoft?

It’s not the first time we have heard such dire predictions. It is true that PCs are today part of a more complicated personal computing environment, but it is a stretch to declare the PC dead. There is only so much you can do with a phone or a tablet. For serious work or fun, a full-spec laptop or desktop is still the machine of choice and will remain so. For example, I am writing this article using a laptop.

The new digital economy
The Internet of Things is expanding, with embedded sensors and data gatherers becoming pervasive. Open platforms and operating environments that feed data into the cloud and allow people to derive value will be an important part of the new digital economy. With traditional jobs under threat from automation and artificial intelligence, imagination and creativity will be more important than ever.

Microsoft’s strategy to diversify and integrate its platform offerings and move its services to the cloud while opening itself up to using its competitor’s apps would seem to be a bold but rational response to the current challenges; one that stands a good chance of succeeding.

There will no doubt be loud complaints from those who claim to speak for all of us. But in the end if a computing environment delivers value and allows people to live their lives as they please, then that platform is likely to succeed, particularly when it has the muscle and know-how of a well-established company behind it.

How Google and Apple respond will be very interesting, but competition is a good thing.

By default, the OS colours the UI based on backdrop wallpaper, and by default, the backdrop wallpaper is highly blue. These factors are both changeable, though I struggle to find any combination that doesn’t look atrocious in this UI.

I thought Canonical’s graphical shell Unity was a pretty ordinary until Microsoft released Windows 8 – an all time low IMO.

Unity has steadily improved – and surely you can’t possible get anything worse than Win8 – so looking forward to Win10 – but only so I don’t have to perform any more home support on Win8 for the family.

As for the Author’s take on is the PC dead – it is not that is will die – more that you will purchase a screen size. If you need power – you remote into a DigitalOcean / Amazon or the likes > Gaming being the exception at the moment.

And with even more useful window snapping (windows key right and left, then up and down give you quarters – oh and when snapped to the side you can resize a window smaller/larger, then snapping another window to the other side doesnt go 50/50 it goes to whatever space is left)

Basically; this is the best version of the windows interface since windows 7 – with a few nice features added on top.

The only problem with it is the mixture of control panels – old school and new school. The new one is of course completely useless.

Why… You keep saying it is terrible. But no solid reasons. Is this just your subjective opinion? Or can you point at some actual failings?

I haven’t yet had a chance to do a serious indepth fool around with the actual release. But what I saw of the release candidates were certainly comparable to the Win 7 release candidates when they were coming out.

As a SOE developer, the customisations I have seen make me confident that I could sell this to the business. Unlike Win 8 which was positioned in such a way to make the learning curve way too painful for the average business.

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